Thursday, January 25, 2007

I'm not a Darwinist, but I Ain't Signing

Bill Dembski continues to demonstrate his ignorance of evolution by ranting against Darwinism. In his latest posting [Dissenting from Darwin] he urges those of us who are skeptical about the exclusivity of Darwinian evolution to sign a petition.

Increasinginly I find that those with doctorates in the natural and engineering sciences are asking, “What can I do to help in the fight against Darwinism?” For some this will involve research bearing directly on Darwinian theory. But there is also another way to help. Many in the media and the public still do not know that there is scientific dissent from Darwinism. They have no idea that MANY scientists are skeptical of neo-Darwinian theory.

So one way you can help is to put your head on the chopping block and voice your skepticism of Darwinism (if you do, trust me, Darwin’s dogmatic defenders will try to chop off your head). This is why Discovery Institute created their statement “A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism.” It states: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

There's nothing wrong with the statement. I am skeptical of claims that natural selection accounts for all of the complexity of life. There are lots of other things going on during evolution.

But I will not sign this petition because Dembski and the IDiots will deliberately misinterpret my intentions. They have no idea what dissent from classical Darwinism really means. They have no idea that someone like me could (mostly) agree with the statement while, at the same time, referring to all Intelligent Design Creationists as IDiots. I suspect that some of those who signed the petition would feel the same way about Intelligent Design.

The list of dupes and IDiots is [here]. There are 686 names and two of them claim the University of Toronto as their affiliation. They are,

Neither of them are listed in the phone directory and they have no affiliation with the university according to a search of the website. Chessman was involved in writing some software for an undergraduate lab back in 1992.

8 comments:

Chris Hyland is wrong about how affiliations are noted in the Disco Institutes's list of Darwin Doubters.

The Disco Institute is deceptive about how it lists the affiliations of people, consistently choosing a 'connection' that's most prestigious. For example, the affiliation of Stephen Meyer, Program Director of the Center for Whatsit at the DI, is listed as "Cambridge University" on their Darwin Doubters list. Meyer got his Ph.D. at Cambridge. And that Cambridge listing was the case when Meyer was a faculty member at Palm Beach Atlantic University, a conservative religious institution. It never appeared next to Meyer's name.

On the other hand, Glen Needham, an Ohio State entomologist, is listed with that affiliation though his Ph.D. is from Oklahoma State. Hence the U of TO affiliation listed for those two guys is not surprising.

What is needed is a similar statement about Newton. Or Lord Kelvin. Yes, Lord Kelvin. We are skeptical about Lord Kelvin's estimate of the age of the earth and other research. Clearly his work on thermal energy is flawed and increasingly we find dissent among PhD holding scientists...

Almost any evolutionist (besides extreme proponents of self-organization) would agree that "random mutation and selection" is necessary but not sufficient for the "complexity of life."

Also, what does the statement mean by "complexity"? Does it refer to the diversity of life at all levels of biological organization, in which case non-selectionist processes are important, or does it mean adaptation, in which case selection has a predominant role (notwithstanding models focusing on self-organization and/or instructionist processes).

The "Complexity of Life" would include the complexity of the DNA code and the associated reproductive machinery that it drives.

Darwin's Model is about the occasional emergence of new species from existing ones, by means of perturbations in the reproductive processes.

In other words, Darwin's Model takes over after DNA-based self-reproducing systems have emerged out of whatever preceded them. Darwin's Model is mute on the origin of life itself and offers no insight into how such an astonishingly complex system of self-reproducing molecular machinery ever emerged out of organic chemistry.

If and when science ever solves that mystery, the theory will probably owe very little to Darwin's thinking on the subject, since he admitted (in letters to colleagues) that he had no clue how life on earth ever got started in the first place.

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Principles of Biochemistry 5th edition

Disclaimer

Some readers of this blog may be under the impression that my personal opinions represent the official position of Canada, the Province of Ontario, the City of Toronto, the University of Toronto, the Faculty of Medicine, or the Department of Biochemistry. All of these institutions, plus every single one of my colleagues, students, friends, and relatives, want you to know that I do not speak for them. You should also know that they don't speak for me.

Superstition

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerlyseemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.

Charles Darwin (c1880)Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Quotations

I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory.

The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.

Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.

The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat.

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is TrueI once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000
It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma
One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick
There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins
Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod
The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.